


Night of Endings, Day of Starts

by Ramzes



Series: Ashes After the Wind [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-08 16:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14109324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: The fateful 153 AC starts with a marriage and ends in a death. Naerys Targaryen's tragedy will start with marrying her brother - and Daenaera Velaryon is powerless to change this. She's powerless to even change her own fate.





	1. A Match Made in the Seven Hells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Riana1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riana1/gifts), [Golden_Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Daughter/gifts).



> To Riana1, for all the times we have raged at Viserys' sheer idiocy to marry Naerys to Aegon. To Golden_Daughter, for her lovely tribute on the dynamics in Viserys' family on tumblr and her professed liking of my views on this. I hope you both - and everyone else, of course - enjoy this.

Few in King’s Landing dared cross Viserys Targaryen, brother of the King, his Hand officially, and his Voice not so officially but no less efficiently, all too often. In fact, Queen Daenaera could think of just one and this was herself. All others flattered, enticed, tried to undermine Viserys – but she was the only one who dared say _no_ and _wrong_ to his face. To Aegon, Viserys could do no wrong and saying _no_ to him was simply inconceivable… unless it was Daenaera demanding it. Sometimes. Often. Not as often as she wished but well, if she could not get what she wished, she usually settled for wishing for what she could get. But not this time. There could be no compromise, no spinning this into something that she could tolerate. There would either be a wedding or not. And Daenaera could not allow for one to take place.

“You should wait at least a few more years,” she said. “Naerys is too young for a marital bed.” And if she got this concession, she would make sure that there would be no wedding at all in a few years. Somehow, she would.

Viserys gave her a look of confused irritation. He knew what she intended. He simply could not understand her _reasons_ for having these intentions. Daenaera could actually sympathize because she could give no reason at all. Aegon was charming, vigorous, with all the popularity his father and uncle lacked. He had proven his masculinity with women long ago… and still, Daenaera felt that this marriage would be Naerys’ downfall. The girl’s horror and Aemon’s raging made her feel a little sick, actually. What had been going on behind her back in these dark years when they had all struggled to restore a realm ravaged by a war and regency? When she had been a young girl, she had spent much time with Viserys’ chidren and Naerys had been kind of a precious doll to her. But after Aegon had finally – finally – consummated their marriage, she had been too busy with her own growing family, his desperate needs, and her queenly duties and had stopped overlooking the septas and maesters who had raised the three children. What had Aegon been _doing_?

As usual, Viserys got angry with his inability to understand. Daenaera saw the moment the sharp retort came to his mind, traveled down his throat, parted his lips… and stayed unspoken. Even if his brother were not here, he would never recall to life the past of Aegon and Daenaera’s own relationship and how at fifteen, Daenaera had been desperate to get into her marital bed.

“She’s too young,” the Queen said, softly this time. “You know she isn’t like most girls. She’s way too frail.”

“Marriage is going to change this,” Viserys said and Aegon nodded in agreement. “Such an important event in a girl’s life changes everything about her, even her constitution. She will become healthier. Her blood will…” And Daenaera stopped listening to him, realizing with horror just how fully the maesters who had been taking care of Naerys for years had him in their grasp. In a way, he was an escapist from the truth about his daughter’s situation, no different from Larra. He could not accept that Naerys would never become healthier because she was not sick. Frail was a different thing. Viserys was not what anyone would call a doting father but he was a caring one – and after the men who had admitted their inability to help had been dismissed, he had fallen prey to those who sold hope. The fact that he could even say such a thing, let alone consider it, crushed her more than any of the well-thought reasons that he had voiced.

“Naerys is a princess of House Targaryen!” Viserys said in an angry voice, lest she had glimpsed the truth about his weakness… because deep inside, he must know that it was weakness, lie, false hope. But he hated being pitied. He would never admit that he needed anything from anyone. Once again, Daenaera cursed the Lysene woman who had made him so. She had not felt an ounce of sorrow when the news of Larra’s death had arrived. Her goodsister had taken the easy way out and it now fell to Daenaera to protect Naerys – a task that felt harder by the minute. “You know what they say about us, Daenaera. That with the death of the dragons and the whims of the regents who dared besiege us – us!, - we’ve become weak. That they can and ought to change the way we rule and live. But it will not happen. Naerys will wed her eldest brother in a ceremony conducted by the High Septon and everyone will see that no matter how much our circumstances had changed, they had not changed this much and we aren’t going to abandon our customs.”

“We should not,” Aegon agreed. Lately, he had not been sleeping well. He had only left his chambers today on her insistence but he would rather hide back there, she could see, from the world and the two people he loved most and who were currently trying to stare each other down. Daenaera bitterly wondered if he even thought it, or was blindly taking Viserys’ side as usual.

What would have happened if Viserys was a different man? Not the charming lad that he had been but someone willing to use Aegon for his own gains and his own family’s advancement? He was nothing if not loyal, no matter how unlikeable his influence made him to Daenaera sometimes. She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek, a liberty that was only allowed to her and his sisters. “May the Seven guide you in all you do,” she whispered, her anger gone, if not her determination.

Aegon, though, did not get her forgiveness this easily. It was one thing to forgive Viserys who thought he was doing the right thing, even if he was wrong, and quite another, to do the same for Aegon who did not even have this conviction. He was simply trying to give Viserys what he wanted, like he always did. To her surprise, he followed her to her chambers later this night but when he tried to smooth the hair off her face after it was released from the elaborate hairdo, she drew back. “Don’t touch me right now,” she said coldly and with a sudden streak of cruelty enjoyed his stricken expression, for there was no greater punishment for the king who could not bear to be touched than being refused the touch of the only person able to arouse his desire and soothe his night fears away.


	2. World of Old and World of New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments. You're great, guys.

“This year is going to end in death,” the Essosi mages claimed and Daenaera thought they meant the death of the last dragon, the poor stunted thing who had finally been saved from the torture that life had inflicted upon it. Of course, they had not dared say it out loud, because the King’s desire to make the dragons return was widely known – as widely as his distaste for them.

“Perhaps this is how it ought to be,” Rhaena sighed and even fierce Baela  had little to say, which meant that even she had accepted that times had truly changed.

“Surely something needs to be done,” Viserys insisted. Viserys, the dragonless one, Viserys who refused to see the world through what had been lost but through what could be reclaimed. Viserys the Optimist, Daenaera would have called him before; these days, he was just Viserys the Resilient.

“Finally,” Aegon would sigh in the intimacy of Daenaera’s bedchamber as a man released from a lifelong prison. The prison of guarding his relief at losing the very weapon that had pressed Westeros down, bound to their will, was still there, of course, but it was an enormously lighter one. It could not roar at night, snatching him from sleep with a cry of horror on his lips; it could not devour anyone… He smiled more often now, his moments of detachment increasingly rare; to her own surprise, Daenaera felt that she could perhaps fall in love with him again, as she had when she had been a very young girl and he, this handsome, aloof, unfailingly kind and unhappy King. The intensity of this feeling had died under the strain of their everyday life, ever dictated by his bouts of unhappiness. Daenaera was surprised to feel that it might return now, when she was no longer fourteen or fifteen. But at night, when he could talk to her for a very long time without suddenly feeling exhausted, when he drew her close and went to sleep with his hand over the curve of her belly, she felt its approach.

As the year went by, Daenaera slowly came to the realization that the mages might have meant another death – a death that, once mentioned, would likely lead to them being thrown in the black cells. As Naerys’ blessed state progressed, Daenaera’s fear for her progressed as well, driven even further by the comparison that she could make between the two of them. Daenaera was gaining weight as she always did when carrying her children, she was as agile and glowing as could be expected from a woman with child; Naerys seemed to be shrinking under the weight of this huge belly that preceded her everywhere. Her breath was constantly constricted, her skin so dry that it peeled off in tiny specks. She could hardly go from her chambers to Daenaera’s without stopping to take a rest at least once. The maesters said that her child felt small, so most of this was water – too much water. Sometimes, Daenaera thought that she could hear it slosh when Naerys did something as simple as turn in her chair in a new attempt to make herself comfortable.

Aegon seemed quite indifferent to his sister-wife’s burden but Viserys was worried and thus made it all worse. All these maesters and midwives only made Naerys think of her troubles more which sucked her life force more rabidly. Daenaera thought that the girl felt better only with her and the girls – even Aemon could not hide his concern but Daenaera had had a lifetime of practice and her daughters were just too young to see how terrible Naerys looked.

“I feel old when I see how much my doll has grown up,” Naerys would say as she watched Daena with her bow beyond the windows.

“I’ll be your doll, Naerys!” little Elaena offered one day and while Daenaera told her daughter that Naerys was a woman now and too old for dolls, Naerys laughed and seated the little girl next to her on the couch. “And I’ll be a good doll, like Daena!” Elaena went on and then looked at Naerys, a line cutting its way between her tiny eyebrows. “Why is your belly so big?” she asked. No design of gowns could mask this, the way they did for Daenaera.

“Because there is a babe in there,” Naerys explained and Elaena stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Why did you eat it?!”

Naerys and Daenaera burst out in peals of laughter that Elaena did not understand but joined blindly and quite happily.

But these moments were so rare! Usually, the whispers at court could sink anyone’s spirits – they could and they did. Shadows of rumours that now, with the dragons gone, the Targaryens were no more than the rest of the Great Houses and indeed, quite less. That perhaps it was time to change the wearers of the crown. That the time to revert to the old ways might have come… Daenaera shivered. What kind of realm would her son inherit one day? She remembered – oh how she remembered! – the echoes and shadows of the Dance of Dragons. Why would anyone want to revert to this? The old world was going away; what was the one that would come into its place?

The rumours surrounding Naerys also grew. They claimed that this babe was too big for her to give birth to. That she was starving herself, willing to die after her lord father had flat out refused to grant her the life of a septa. Many were already pushing their daughters in Aegon’s eyesight, for his appreciation of female beauty was well-known.

“I won’t give him the satisfaction!” Naerys said once, in an uncharacteristic display of bitterness, but as she prepared for the birth, her fear was visible. Daenaera oversaw the preparations with the same care that she did the ones meant for the arrival of her own child, trying to impress her own self-control and strength to Naerys who would be a first time mother. And yet as water was boiled and little clothes checked over and over, the prediction of the death that would mark the end of the year came back again and again from so many lips.

They did not mean the last dragon.

Naerys’ pains started two days before the end of the year but even when Daenaera’s also did, a day later, Naerys’ babe had not arrived yet. Maesters hurried to and fro from one birthing chamber to another and it was clear which one worried them more. Men stood ready to ride for all the big septs in a hurry and as the last day of the year started to fade, the silent question in everyone’s mind turned to whispers: would the bells all over King’s Landing beat for a royal babe, or a death first? Daenaera’s babe, or Naerys’ death?

“She’s going to be fine,” the King said unconvincingly and his brother did not believe him – how could he when Aegon could not believe himself either? Viserys just kept staring grimly at the wall and each time Aegon came, he found him in the exact same spot. He clearly had not moved at all.

And then, the yells and the sound of running feet erupted from the wrong chamber. Aegon rose sharply from his chair, threw the doors wide open, got pushed back by the nearest maester without even noticing that he was being touched, and in such a rude manner.

“Stay here,” Viserys said, appearing out of nowhere. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“Is it?” Aegon asked because when had it ever been fine? He tried to remind himself that Daenaera was an experienced mother. She had done it five times already. He repeated this in his head over and over, so focused on clinging to it that when everything became quiet and the maesters left the birthing chambers and the Grand Maester approached him with a peculiar look on his face, he did not understand. And then he did. And ran. Hid in his chambers as he had done for so many years, so many years ago, and now there was no Daenaera to lure her way into his solidude.

The last light of the old year reached a finger into an overlooked slit in the curtains of Naerys’ birthing chamber and caressed the tiny brow of the new life that had  just arrived.

* * *

 

 

 

**The End**


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